


and they were roommates

by teacupfulofbrains



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Figure Skater AU, Fluff, Klance Drabbles, M/M, More Tags to be added as I go, Steven Universe AU, Teacher AU, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a collection of klance au drabbles, and i need a place to leave them, basically just a fuckton of klance scenarios in a fuckton of different alternate universes, bc i am weak, gem au, it's a drabble collection, soft klance, story dump, superhero au, take this trash and enjoy it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-08 07:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14100699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacupfulofbrains/pseuds/teacupfulofbrains
Summary: oh my god they were roommates.and gems. and soldiers. and mermaids and wizards and royalty and rebels and roller-skaters and figure-skaters and rivals and friends and lovers . . .(or: a collection of klance au drabbles.)





	1. and they were skaters

**Author's Note:**

> i always have great ideas for klance aus but i never have the time or motivation to write the into full-fledged stories so i created a place to dump them. if i ever get inspired i can go back and write a full-length fic from it. i hope you enjoy my nonsensical ramblings about two dorks in love : ) 
> 
> SUMMARY: keith is a physicist, and the younger brother of former olympian shiro, and a terrible skater. one day, after pidge drags him to the ice rink, he gets some private tutoring from a surprisingly talented, surprisingly handsome stranger.

Keith’s face slams into the cold, hard ice rink, and he can hear Pidge laughing as she skates circles around him but he doesn’t really give a damn anymore. He regrets her talking him into this; just because his brother is the Lions’ star captain doesn’t mean he knows anything about ice-skating. He barely understands the rules of ice hockey as is. Give him a numerical breakdown of a skater and ask him to calculate velocities and accelerations and he’ll be happier than a tornado in a trailer park. Give him a pair of skates and expect him to stay upright? Much trickier task.

The light hitting his face is suddenly gone, and Keith groans loudly. “Fuck off, Pidge, I’m not getting back on these goddamn death shoes.” Someone laughs, someone who’s decidedly _not_ his annoying next-door neighbor. Keith lifts his head, cracking one eye open, and then both eyes fly open in shock. Leaning over him is a _literal angel_ , silhouetted in blindingly white light.

The angel bends down, and oh, that’s a person. It’s a strikingly handsome boy, about Keith’s age, with dark brown hair and brilliant blue eyes. He’s wearing a blue-and-grey scarf, a thick green jacket, and a knit blue beanie with kitty ears on it. “That’s a shame,” the stranger purrs. “I’d certainly be more than willing to help you stay on them for a little longer.” Keith begrudgingly accepts the helping hand, hoping that the blush on his face isn’t as burning red as he thinks it is. The second he’s back on his feet, he wobbles dangerously and pitches forward almost immediately. This time, the stranger catches him, wrapping his hands around Keith’s forearms for support. 

“Whoa, there, buddy! You can’t go falling for me just yet, I don’t even know your name!” the stranger jokes, and Keith is shocked by how easily the flirtations roll off his tongue. He grins impishly, eyes sparkling, and Keith averts his eyes, blushing furiously.

“Keith,” he says, and the stranger smiles even wider (Keith hadn’t thought that was possible).

“Nice to meet you, Keith! Like I said, I can definitely teach you a thing or two, if you really want to learn!” Keith wants to say no, wants to yank his hands out of the stranger’s grasp and take these stupid fucking skates off and curse Pidge out the whole ride home. He can see her on the other side of the arena, smirking at him. But the stranger doesn’t seem to be making fun of him – his eyes are earnest and bright, and he looks genuinely interested.

“Well, I guess my inability to skate is kind of an embarrassment to my brother,” he grumbles. “And if you’re sure you don’t have anything better to do . . .” 

“Hey, what better way to spend my afternoon off than by teaching a cute boy with a cute name to skate?” the stranger laughs. Keith blushes even harder at that.

“You know, speaking of names, I still don’t know yours.”

“That’s not important!” the stranger laughs, although there’s something slightly off-focus in his eyes. “Now, as for where to start . . .”

It takes Keith a while to understand what he’s doing. At one point, he gives up and starts aggressively monologuing about the physics of skating, complaining about how “physicists don’t skate, we solve shitty problems about skaters while we learn how to do fucking physics, I understand the basic equations _why is this so fucking hard_.” The stranger just nods along, voice serious, and says, “So, in order to generate the optimum friction when you stop yourself, you need to angle your foot like _this_ , and then you –”

Keith spends the entire afternoon letting this mysterious, still-unnamed stranger teach him to skate. At one point, when Keith’s legs are burning almost as much as his face, he sits on the bleachers next to an increasingly-smug Pidge (“shut your fucking mouth or I will delete every single one of your game saves I _swear to God_ ”) and watches the stranger skate. He’s a brilliant figure skater, spinning through the air with grace and ease and somehow staying upright _every single time he lands_. Keith sees everything he does as physics equations, calculating the forces and velocities and accelerations almost unconsciously, and it’s still so fucking beautiful he’s breathless.

After the break, they spend another two and a half hours messing around on the rink. The stranger still takes the time to explain things to Keith in terms of physics, but now that Keith can (for the most part) move and stop on his own, he takes to skating backwards in front of him, shouting encouragements and random physics nonsense. Keith rolls his eyes and corrects him every time, and after the fifth time he’s asked about the “velociraptor of the average skater” he realizes that the stranger is trying to make him feel at ease. He’s almost annoyed how easily it works.

The rink is starting to close when Shiro shows up to pick up him and Pidge, with a young woman laughing at his side. Keith is gay, and even he has to admit that the woman is stunning, with toned muscles and white hair twisted into a high bun. Keith recognizes her as Allura d’Altea, an Olympic figure skating coach and old friend of Shiro’s from his Olympic days. “Hey, Shiro,” he calls. “Be there in a minute.” He turns to say goodbye to the stranger, who is gaping at his brother, and panics. Has he really managed to befriend one of Shiro’s rabid groupies?

“Your brother is _Takashi Shirogane_?” the stranger squawks. “And he’s hanging out with –” 

“Lance,” Allura calls, and there’s a mild annoyance seeping into her tone. “I thought you called off because you were feeling sick? And yet here you are at the ice rink, the exact place you begged me not to drag you to this morning?”

The lightbulb goes off in Keith’s head. “You – you’re – you’re _Lance McClain,_ ” he gasps, and suddenly his breath is clogging in his throat because the youngest-ever figure skater to make the Olympics three years in a row, the youngest-ever figure skater to win gold at the Olympics three years in a row, the holder of numerous world records, _the Lance McClain_ has been teaching him to skate all afternoon with shitty physics jokes and gentle praises and a brilliant, shining smile. “I – can’t believe that –”

Lance grins impishly. “I didn’t want you to be starstruck,” he confesses. “I won’t lie, it was a relief that you didn’t recognize me. Usually people freak out as soon as they see me, and while I won’t deny that I love the attention, sometimes it’s nice to just be a nameless stranger who’s good at figure skating. That’s why you didn’t mention that the brother you’re so afraid to embarrass is an Olympic hockey champion, right?” Keith nods, dumbfounded.

“Lance, get over here right now before I decide you need to do _six_ hours of basic drills tomorrow morning as punishment instead of three!” Allura yells. Lance seizes Keith’s arm, pushes up his too-big coat sleeve, and whips a dark blue Sharpie out of his pocket. Keith raises an eyebrow; Lance chuckles awkwardly.

“I always carry one on me. Autographs, you know? I’d hoped I wouldn’t need it today, but I don’t really think I mind using it for this.” He carefully writes a set of numbers onto Keith’s arm, and then signs his wrist. For good measure, he slowly lifts Keith’s arm up to his mouth and presses a soft, slow kiss to the signature, maintaining eye contact with a furiously blushing Keith the entire time. 

“Was that really necessary?” Keith mutters, unable to avert his eyes. Lance winks.

“Nah. Now that I know who your brother is, he could’ve gotten my number from Allura for you. But this is more fun, right? Old-fashioned romance, and all that?” He skates away, leaving Keith frozen on the ice with his knees weak and his entire body shaking like a livewire.

To his credit, he manages to skate all the way to the wall before he collapses against it. Pidge and Shiro are both peering down at him, Lance and Allura long gone. “Glad you came?” Pidge laughs.

“I will kill you in real life, Katie. I’m wearing knife shoes. And now I know how to walk on them.” Lance’s face pops into his mind, and then he’s burying his face and blushing again and furiously ignoring Shiro and Pidge’s teasing.  

@teacupfulofstarshine


	2. and they were teachers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> keith and lance are teachers. someone starts a rumor that keith is dating allura; lance has a foolproof plan to debunk it.

Keith kicks his feet up on the break room coffee table, flings his head back against the couch, and grabs the Anguish Pillow™ (a faded white pillow with _Fuck Off_ embroidered on it in bright red thread). He presses the pillow over his mouth and screams, because fuck high schoolers and fuck calculus and fuck trying to teach calculus to high schoolers. Allura looks up at him, raising one perfect eyebrow while she sips far too delicately from a mug Keith knows for a _fact_ contains shitty, scalding, black coffee with at least three extra shots of espresso in it.

“Are the children giving you problems, Keith?” she asks, voice light and professional. Keith flips her off without moving the pillow. “Now, now, Mr. Kogane, that’s not the way to treat your new principal, is it?” The pillow soars to the side as Keith sits upright in shock, shirt rumpled and half-untucked, tie loose and askew. Allura just grins back at him, hair twisted in an elegant bun, skirt and blouse elegant and unwrinkled. 

“You got the position?”

“They interviewed several candidates, myself included, and then said they felt like I had ‘the best chance of succeeding the former principal without disrupting the fabric of the school’,” she quotes, eyes shining. Keith nearly trips over the coffee table as he scrambles across the room to hug her. 

“That’s amazing, ‘Lura. I’m so happy for you.”

“Thank you, Keith, I –” 

“I _knew_ you two were together!” a voice screeches from the doorway. Keith turns around just in time to catch a blindingly white flash as a student snaps a picture with their cell phone. He has the foresight to lunge forward and grab the phone, eyes narrowed. 

“Confiscated,” he snarls, deleting the picture, but the student is already sprinting down the hallway, giggling maniacally. “Great. Now they’re gonna tell all their friends we’re together and it’s gonna be the talk of the school for _weeks_. I’m sorry, Allura.” Allura just smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. 

“You cannot control what the students choose to do, Keith. It wasn’t your fault. High schoolers will be high schoolers, after all. Some things you just have to choose to move past.” Keith collapses on the couch again, barely remembering the Anguish Pillow™ before he screams again. He hates the heteronormative patriarchic agenda, he decides; not that he didn’t hate it before, but it resurges every now and again, and this is one of those times. 

He’s still fuming about it in his seventh period calculus class, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Keith scrawls the most complicated equations he can think of on the board, muttering angrily, for approximately fifteen minutes, not even bothering to take attendance, and then someone raises their hand. 

“Mr. Kogane, sir?” Keith almost snaps the chalk in half. Instead, he turns around to see Leah Price, one of his star pupils. “Um . . . is everything alright?”

“Peachy,” he growls, and the chalk snaps. “The heteronormative agenda strikes again, that’s all. Fuck the patriarchy.” Keith snaps a picture of the board’s worth of math before erasing it all. “I trust you all did your homework last night, so I expect you to turn it in. The first person to complain or offer me a shitty excuse earns the entire class _double homework_ tonight.”

Keith grades tests in the car for an hour and waits for Lance, who’s busy moderating the GSA. When he slides into the car, grinning, Keith seizes the front of his shirt and yanks him forward, smashing their mouths together in a harsh, messy kiss. Their teeth clack together from the force, Keith’s test folder spilling across the passenger seat floor, and Keith tugs on Lance’s hair to maneuver him closer.

When they pull apart, Lance’s hair is a ruffled mess, tie askew, lips slightly swollen where Keith’s bitten them, face beet-red. “Keith, babe, not that I don’t appreciate the affection, but are you okay?” 

“Allura got the principal’s job. I hugged her to congratulate her and some kid took a picture. I took the phone, but I’m sure the rumor is all over school that we’re a thing.” Lance looks at Keith for a long, quiet moment, and then he laughs. Keith is confused and a little angry, but Lance smiles and cups his face, smoothing one thumb over the skin beneath Keith’s eyes in the way that makes him _melt_.

“Keith, it’s cute that you got so offended, but if you were worried I’d believe those rumors then clearly you don’t know me nearly as well as you think you do. I love you, babe, I know you’re not gonna abandon me for a _woman_ , even one as fine as Allura,” and the disdain with which Lance says _woman_ is so pronounced that Keith bursts out laughing. Lance looks confused, but he leans forward and touches their foreheads together, careful and sweet.

“It was pretty silly of me, huh? To think you’d believe something as stupid as that?”

“Nah, I’d probably have overreacted too,” Lance says, and his breath is warm on Keith’s face. Keith kisses him again, softer, sweeter. “Now, about how we debunk these rumors . . .”

The next day, Lance and Keith walk into school hand in hand, Keith leaning on Lance’s shoulder and carrying Lance’s extra-large iced coffee and staring somewhat more adoringly than he’d normally prefer to do in public while Lance rambles about genetically engineered frogs. The students in the hallways turn to stare at them, mostly so they can duck beneath Lance’s sweeping arm gestures. When they reach the biology lab, Lance takes his coffee from Keith. “This is where I get off, babe.” 

“Have fun,” Keith says, and he’s about to lean over and kiss Lance’s cheek when Lance surprises both Keith and the other students by spinning Keith into a dramatic dip and kissing him with all the flamboyant confidence of a 1950s-movie star. 

“I love you,” Lance whispers, pulling just far away from Keith to be able to speak, lips brushing against Keith’s with every syllable. He pulls Keith to his feet, kisses the back of his hand sweetly, and then disappears into the biology lab, leaving a flushed, flustered Keith in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by far-too-curious students. 

During his fifth period lab, Lance is about to slice into the flower he’s modelling dissection on when Keith bursts in, knocks the scalpel out of his hand, and pulls him into a kiss every bit as furious and dramatic as the one in the hallway. Through his closed eyelids, Keith registers at least four flashes go off. Perfect.

He’s lounging in the break room when Allura comes in again. “You know, when I’m principal, I’m going to have to up the anti-PDA regulations for students and staff alike,” she says, voice all business and seriousness, but Keith knows she’s (mostly) teasing because the new home screen on her phone is a shaky, blurry image of Lance’s morning hallway kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was an initial version of this that was much angstier from keith's pov but this is a fluff dump so we're not gonna do that here : )  
> i'm definitely not distracting myself from a bigger project by writing these ; ) ; ) ; ) ; )


	3. and they were superheroes (i)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lance is a news photographer trying to get quality action shots of the city superhero, inferno. he falls off a building, and inferno has to come and save him.

Lance _really_ wishes he hadn’t gotten out of bed this morning.

He didn’t expect to be spending his Saturday freefalling towards the pavement, clinging to his camera and frantically searching for something to break his fall. Such are the perils of amateur news photography, he decides; he might get paid extra for his reckless abandon in search of prime shots, but it does come with a higher mortality rate than your average photographer.

He can hear a loud, crashing explosion off to his left, and he swivels his body in an attempt to capture the fight. At the very least, he can save the camera, and then they’ll have to pay his mamá for the prints – a small consolation, but the best he can offer her.

He’s falling too fast to get a decent, consistent angle (how tall is this building, anyway?), and then something blocks his lens altogether, something bright red. Suddenly, there are arms wrapped around him, and his fall is slowing down to a reasonable pace, and then, when he looks away from his camera and looks at his savior, he sees a distinctive mane of flaming hair and striking purple facial markings. Lance knows this face – he’s photographed it a hundred times, curated a truly excellent blog about its exploits (much to the chagrin of his roommate, Keith). 

Inferno, the superhero Lance spends his life photographing and writing about and not-so-secretly crushing on, pulls Lance even closer, jets of flame roaring out from his feet, sunlight sparking off his bright red armor. “You know, you really should be more careful,” Inferno growls. “I’m not always going to be here to save you when you fall off of buildings.”

Lance winks. “But if I don’t dangle precariously off of buildings, I won’t get the most flattering shots of you when you _curbstomp a motherfucker_ , now will I?” The flames Inferno is using to jettison them through the air falter for a moment as Inferno’s whole face goes a brilliant red. “All the best photos of you come from this boy and his camera. You wouldn’t wanna sacrifice that for subpar work by making me stay safe, right?” 

“I don’t wanna sacrifice _you_ so trashy news outlets can have my photo,” Inferno mutters. Now it’s Lance who’s heating up, and not just from the ever-present flames. He tightens his grip around Inferno’s neck as they careen sharply around a skyscraper. The monster is still rampaging around behind them, but right as Lance is about to ask if everything is under control, lightning crackles down from a clear blue sky, a sizzling, brilliant purple.

“They’ve got this for a few minutes. I won’t be able to help them until I know that nothing’s going to happen to you.” 

“I have to make a living, you know,” Lance says, annoyed now. “Not all of us get paid to save the city.” 

“What makes you think I save this city for the money?” 

“I know, I know, you save the city to save people –”

“I save the city because of _you_ ,” Inferno says, and he’s decidedly not looking at Lance, which is good, because Lance suspects that if he did they would both spontaneously combust. “I save the city because it means nothing will happen to you.”

“And I appreciate that, I really do. But you can’t wrap me in bubble wrap and keep me safe from everything,” Lance says gently. “I have to be able to do my job. I know you worry, and I’ll try to be better about keeping myself out of harm’s way, alright?” 

Inferno doesn’t respond, but he does change course, heading towards the continuing fight. He stops two blocks away and deposits Lance on the rooftop of a bank skyscraper. “You have long range lenses, right?”

“The longest around,” Lance flirts, pleased when Inferno snorts behind his hand.

“Can you get good pictures from here?” 

“This should work just fine,” Lance says. Inferno turns to go, and then Lance calls out. 

“Hey!”

Inferno turns, and Lance has already crossed the rooftop in three long strides. He knows better than to touch Inferno’s head, not while his hair is literal and actual fire, so he settles for seizing the front of his costume and pulling their mouths together quickly. He kisses Inferno for one second, two seconds, three seconds before the heat of the flames is too much and he has to pull back.

“Be careful out there, okay Keith?” Lance whispers. “I love you.”

His roommate-slash-boyfriend-slash-superhero manages to mumble it back, face somehow _even redder_ , before launching himself off the building and towards the monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick note about the (i):   
> i've decided to label these drabbles, so to avoid confusion, here's the key  
> (i), (ii), (iii), etc. means multiple drabbles that fit under the same umbrella au (so like, there are multiple different superhero au's i could write, and this is one of them, and there may be more in the future ; ) )   
> (a), (b), etc means multiple versions of the same au (so like, if i write a fic where lance is one role and keith is the other, then i might write it again, but with the roles swapped) 
> 
> thanks for reading!<3<3


	4. and they were gems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lance runs away from homeworld after a rebellious guard saves his life. they're both small and unassuming, but together they can do great things.

The first time they fuse, it’s an accident. 

Lance has seen the future. He knows he will lose his physical form today, knows that he will regain it later on Homeworld, knows that the dangerous rebellion ends today. He does not expect Keith to come barreling out of nowhere and tackle him out of the way of the rebel’s sword. When he opens his eyes, he’s taller, and there are four eyes instead of two, and he can feel that he’s not _himself_ anymore, and he is afraid.

When Sendak threatens to shatter Keith for his insubordination, Lance doesn’t even have to think twice. He grabs Keith’s hand and _runs_ , coating the ground in ice to speed them up as he flings them off the Homeworld base, towards Earth. 

The second time they fuse, it’s completely intentional.

After Keith’s initial breakdown at Lance’s so-called stupidity ( _it’s not stupid_ , Lance thinks, _it’s not stupid to want you whole and unbroken and I’d do what I did again in a heartbeat, moron_ ), they spend their time exploring the strange planet. They only bring up the fusion once, and they both blush too much to get much farther than _I’ve never had that many eyes before_.

Lance finds a small glade, full of the strange glowing Earth-creatures that so closely resemble fallen stars, and he brings Keith there. “Dance with me,” he says, and Keith’s whole body is red but he somehow turns even redder.

“I don’t know how,” he mumbles, “and you’re so far above me, I couldn’t possibly –”

“Neither do I,” Lance hums, “and this is Earth. We are equal here.” He takes Keith’s hand in his, and Keith meets his eyes, still unsure. They reach their other hands out, the hands where gems gleam in their palms, but balk when they get close. Lance puts his hand on Keith’s shoulder; Keith’s hand settles on Lance’s waist. 

Lance hums and begins to step backwards, pulling Keith forwards. It isn’t long before Keith’s voice joins his, fainter and lower but just as beautiful. They spin around a few times, and then Keith is lifting Lance up, both hands on his waist, and Lance can barely keep the melody, he’s laughing so hard, and then there’s a flash of light, and then – 

They almost unfuse when the rebels discover them, but they pull themselves together. One of the rebels stays vigilant, ready to summon a weapon, but the other smiles and offers a hand. “Welcome to earth,” she says. “Welcome to freedom.”

They don’t fuse all the time. They still fight a lot, and they need their space, and there are some things that only Lance or only Keith can do. Even so, they’re always together, even if they aren’t always fused. Almost always, anyway. 

In the early days of the rebellion, they fight as a fusion. They’re stronger, bigger, faster together, but then they encounter one of Sendak’s soldiers. They defeat him easily, and his gem lies on the ground, prone and vulnerable. They raise their hand to shatter it, but they hesitate. Their face contorts into pain, and then they fall apart. 

“You can’t shatter him!” Lance cries. 

“They wouldn’t think twice about shattering us!” Keith yells, and the ground beneath his feet erupts into fire and fury. “We have the upper hand! We can’t sacrifice it for a moment of weakness!” And he knows that this is Lance’s Achilles heel, knows that Lance hates being called weak, being reminded of his role on Homeworld as nothing more than a pretty face, but he says it anyway, and Lance is speeding away before he knows what’s happened. 

He fights on his own, using a long, icy spear instead of a weapon, freezing soldiers left and right, and then he comes face-to-face with Sendak himself. “You are weak,” Sendak snarls, lifting Lance by the throat. Lance calls for his ice, but he’s too distracted, in too much pain, and the ice won’t come. “It will be a pleasure to grind you into dust beneath my feet.” He reaches for Lance’s hand, for Lance’s _gem_ , and then someone screams and Sendak goes flying. 

Keith catches Lance in midair. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, lips pressed against Lance’s forehead. 

“Me too,” Lance responds, and they land as a fusion. Sendak snarls, but they just summon their weapons and drive him back. 

It’s luck, nothing more, that Sendak gets in a final blow before they destroy his physical form. They fall apart on the ground, and Lance has enough sense to bubble Sendak and send him away before he turns to Keith, curled in a ball. When Lance turns him over, Keith’s face is glitching out, and there’s an ugly crack running down the center of his gem. 

Lance’s vision goes white, and when he can see again, the entire battlefield is coated in shimmering, shining ice. 

Allura finds them, of course she does, and she weeps onto Keith’s hand and his gem heals itself again. Lance pulls him close. “Don’t scare me like that,” he hisses, “ever again, you hear me?” 

Keith smiles, and it's more of a smirk but still dripping with love. “As you wish, Your Clarity.”

**Author's Note:**

> come scream at me on tumblr!//[@teacupfulofstarshine](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/teacupfulofstarshine)  
> i'm also on discord!//@bluesimon#821


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